Crushed
by 4ofakind
Summary: "Dean! There was an accident! The rocks-" It took Dean a few seconds to realize how urgent and strained Cas' voice sounded. Crap. That sounded bad. Light Dean/Castiel. fluff/friendship, injuries, probably one-shot.
1. Chapter 1

Dust. The only thing Dean could perceive was dust.

On his tongue- dust. Coating his eyelids- dust. A rocky pain shot through his left arm.

Then everything went dark.

...

The first thing Dean remebered thinking about was home. Looking back, it really wasn't what he would have expected himself to think, but images of the impala, Sammy, and sleep drifted through his mind. Sleep and Bobby's old house, Cas and beers, comfort and slow. Slow and the smell of Cas' trenchcoat- the nice dusty smell that lingered wherever he walked.

Mhm.

"Dean."

He realized a voice had reached his ears. Whos voice was that? He knew that voice. But the feelings that washed over him felt so nice- he wasn't quite ready to open his eyes.

"Dean!"

It was Cas's voice, and it took Dean's brain a few moments to realize how urgent and strained it sounded.

"wha- ?" he mumbled before a familiar pain sprung up from his arm and up his somehow twisted shoulder. He tried to squelch it as he listened again for the voice.

"Dean!" It came again, this time a little clearer, and as Dean struggled to open his eyes he began to make out the angels flat figure in front of him. Large, crackled boulders jutted intrusively into the edges of his vision, and he realized Cas was struggling to sit up, leaning just across from his own face and under an uncouthly rough overhang of some kind. The surface they lay on was rocky as well, but there was a small pocket of space between the two friends and the hulks of geology surrounding them.

"Cas?"

"Dean-" the other answered immediately, sounding even more dead-pan serious than usual, "Dean there was an accident. The rocks, they-"

Suddenly he stopped and curled his head towards his chest, and Dean looked down his friend's crumpled form and noticed he was ferociously clutching his hip. There was some blood showing under the fingers, and his face was screwed over with pain.

When the angel brought his head back up, Dean again noticed he himself was not void of pain. It was his left arm, and he couldn't see it from where his head was but it hurt like hell. The more he realized he was awake the stronger it stung, and it was only getting worse by the half-second. Still facing a wide-eyed, hip-clutching Castiel he let out a half-worded yelp of pain as the sting of blood suddenly grew unbearable- the pain flooded his brain and he felt his face twist under the extent of the hurt.

What the Hell had he done to his arm?! God, this was not good.

"There was a cave is- Your arm!" Cas spoke loudly, shock lifting off the end of his sentence.

"Ow," Dean clenched through gritted teeth, "Jesus, Cas!"

Upon getting no response Dean opened his eyes to look at the angel, wide and feral whites showing desperately.

"Do something!" he called gruffly, pain lacing his accent.

"Dean. I can't. It doesn't work here- something is wrong."

Gee, ya think? Dean thought as the horrible sting from his arm overwhelmed him again.

Cas looked at him with concerned, hurt blue eyes. Saddened, but maybe a little something more. Dean could never tell with this angel.

God, he was almost crying it was so bad. Being ripped apart by hellhounds was really the only thing this could compare too- no, no he couldn't think about more pain right now. Oh god. His teeth ground against eachother and he almost worried they would fall off. He could feel himself secluded in his brain by the extremity of the pain- it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

Cas glanced at his human friend's body, lying on his stomach with his arm, from what he could see, crushed beneath the corner of a particularly jagged boulder. The edge of the rock was digging into the upper half of his arm, part of his tissue that still had fresh nerves intact.

He let out a desperate, silent sigh and attempted to move his torso closer to where Dean lay in agony. he had to prop himself up awkwardly using his elbows, for he, too, was trapped by rock, and he was almost positive his vessel's right hip-bone had been crushed during the fall. It was hurting him, but more than that it seriously impaired his movement.

It was all the angel could do to drag himself several feet to his friend, and to reach out and take hold of Dean's one use-able, dirt covered and scratch encrusted hand.

"Dean." The man heard his friend speak though his own blood-buzzed ears, calmly but sternly in only the way an angel really could, "You have to try to stay calm. Listen to my voice."

Through the hazy, blinding light of the sting Dean realized a hand had found his limp one. He gripped into the flesh of the hand until he could barely feel his own, desperately trying to bear the twist that spun up his left shoulder and neck, from his arm and into his head and spewing out his ears and mouth.

"Dean. You are going to be okay," Cas said, and Dean would later look back and realize assuring safety was not one of Cas' well-known attributes. But even through the pain he guessed he appreciated the effort.

"The others saw what happened. Given the chances and the circumstances it is very likely that we will survive this."

Pffch- somehow not very assuring.

But the angel squeezed back on Dean's hand, and he found himself oddly comforted and his clenched jaw loosened. He closed his eyes and squeezed, trying to focus the energy into his right hand.

Castiel didn't recall how long they stayed like that- angel letting hunter grip his hand for comfort while he himself lay awkwardly propped up against the unforgiving stone. He solemley watched Dean's face grow less and less pained and he wondered if he would ever regain feeling in his vessel's hand.


	2. Chapter 2

When Dean once again regained conciseness, he was first aware of the change in light. It was darker- almost near dusk, it seemed at first blink, and a purpley-gray light swam around the boulders and soaked into the textured surface on which Dean lay. The second thing he noticed was the lack of pain- or at least the lack of excruciating pain- coming from his twisted arm.

Crap. That couldn't be good.

Had it finally given out? Crap.

He knew it was still stuck under the goddamn rock, and his shoulder was still pinned up against the ledge he couldn't quite will his neck to let him see. He was still lying on his stomach, his other arm somewhere along his side.

And that was about all he knew.

Dean tried to rack his brain for the last things he remembered and purple rock-dust flew in front of his eyes. Cas- they were walking. Things got fuzzy no- no. "The Rocks." That was right, the avalanche or whatever the hell it was. Was that natural? The had been walking to catch up with the party not ten steps ahead (Sam was there- he must have seen) when something dusty and large and hard came rolling down the side of the hill. Something slipped underfoot and they went down and fell hard.

Son of a bitch...

Turning his mind back to the present, he glanced around (mostly with his eyes- God, his neck was sore) and observed the small space in which he was enclosed. The rocks, large and crusted and old and ignorant and disgustingly familiar jutted up about two feet above his head, and one large, flat-sided boulder formed the opposite wall of the enclosure. Cas' body lay diagonally from it, his hairy, black head three feet away from Dean's and his torso turned at a 90-degree angle so he was perpendicular to Dean's upper body, though one of his feet lay pathetically near the corner- where the flat wall met a rougher jagged one that made up that corner of the pocket of space.

Before examining his friend's condition more thoroughly, Dean decided to bite the bit and look up; try to determine just how screwed over by Hades they were. He craned his neck as far up as it would go and squinted his eyes at the somehow painfully dull light bathing the boulders above his head. Several concaves of rock wove together further above his head, and, eventually, after passing jutting edges and what must have been the top of the flat-wall rock, gave their way into a tiny window of light- a small crack of opening, of sky. Thank God.

Well, they had air, and though Dean couldn't deny: it would be a total bitch to get them out of this goddamn cavern, at least they weren't screwed. The opening couldn't be more that ten feet above Dean's dirt-covered head.

He was contemplating just exactly how they were going to go about getting through it when he looked back at Cas's crumpled and dusty form and saw that his eyes were closed. The angel had his cheek smushed against the slanted and particularly dusty boulder that made up the floor on which they lay, and Dean winced with a slight smile at how utterly uncomfortable it looked, though he then realized he probably didn't look any more luxurious with his own heavy face and twisted shoulder. But he could see his friend's chest rising and falling, just barely against the rock, an decided to let him sleep.

He tried to find his other hand- his free hand, his right hand- and crammed his neck against his chest to look down his own body. The hand was laying peacefully, the back of it just touching his jeaned thigh, scratched and bruised and covered with dust and it was holding Cas' in an unrelenting fist.

Well. Crap.

He hadn't even realized he'd been doing that.

Dean vaguely remembered his companion reaching out to take his hand when his shoulder started killing him, and he was thankful for the break from the pain.

He began to (very urgently) coax his stiff finger muscles to let go of the white, asleep knuckles clenched under his own.

God. Kinda nice of Cas to offer up an appendage of his own to have the life squeezed out of.

And when Dean managed to gain some control over his hand he began to fear he had done literally just that: from where his head was lying he could just make out a dark prune spot spilling off the center of Cas' palm- not to mention the paleness that seeped over the whole hand and the dark indents of Dean's fingernails against the deprived skin.

Eesh that was going to be painful. And his angle-mojo wasn't even working. Dean winced again as he turned his eyes over the hand's corpse-like features, and brought his own shamefully up to his chest and tried to shake life back into his cold and clamped fingers.

He didn't feel bad (Of course that's what's going to happen if you give a man in agony a hand- he's going to squeeze the goddamn life out of it and bruise his friend in the process).

He sighed, and green eyes found there way to Cas' not-so-comfortable-looking face, and the pale evening light pooling in from the crack in the ceiling began to darken.


End file.
